Julia Nimchinski is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hard Skill Exchange, the world’s first B2B marketplace where sales professionals trade best practices, strategies, and techniques to drive growth and crush quotas. In this episode, you’ll hear about Julia’s unique approach to market research that is rooted in finding the human connection and having authentic conversations.
Julia Nimchinski is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hard Skill Exchange, the world’s first B2B marketplace where sales professionals trade best practices, strategies, and techniques to drive growth and crush quotas.
This serial entrepreneur and go-to-market maven joins Markigy to discuss how she decided to found Hard Skill Exchange. This platform and community helps B2B companies grow revenue by connecting like-minded sales professionals.
In this episode, you’ll hear about Julia’s unique approach to market research that is rooted in finding the human connection and having authentic conversations.
Julia’s vision for Hard Skill Exchange is to help top professionals learn from the best in the industry. Not the ones that necessarily get the most likes on LinkedIn or are household names but experts who really know what they’re doing in the realm of B2B. She shares her unabashed take on the state of B2B marketing today and details the pitfalls marketers typically fall into.
Another concept that has really taken the B2B industry by storm lately is Go-To-Market strategy and planning. It seems that everyone and their mother has GTM in their LinkedIn headlines.
So who really is an expert? Julia, for one. As a true GTM leader who has been talking about this and crafted GTM strategies long before it was a hype word, Julia pulls back the cover, outlining what GTM should really be about..
In this episode of Markigy, Julia and Leanne discuss:
The actionable takeaways mentioned in this episode are:
To learn more subscribe to Markigy: The Science of Marketing Strategy with Leanne Dow-Weimer.
This episode was produced and brought to you by Reignite Media.
[00:00:00] Leanne: Welcome to Markigy, the science of marketing strategy. A bi weekly podcast where all the cool marketers discuss their favorite marketing strategies, study by study. On this show, we feature marketing risk takers who believe long term wins for the customer equal long term wins for the business too. How?
Human led marketing. The combination of where science Creativity and strategy meet. Or as we also like to call it, Markigy. Let's break down the marketing trends, myths, and methodologies together. I'm your host Leanne Dow-Weimer. Let's go. Good morning. This is Leanne Dow-Weimer with Markigy. I'm joined today with Julia from HYPCCCYCL, and she's just so amazing.
She has brought together people for coaching, for games, to build a community, and we're lucky to have her join us. Julia, tell us more about you and your background and what you've had going on.
[00:01:00] Julia: Excited to be here, Leanne. Yeah, my background is marketing. I've spent 10 years working in the industry in different sales tech companies.
So, yeah, all of the projects that normally, you know, marketers are not excited about, I was pretty much excited for. So it's all data integration, um, revenue, intelligence, platforms, stuff like that. And I'm particularly passionate about early stage companies. Because of the professional possibilities that they give us, and, um, the level of, you know, learning, uh, that you can get from there.
So, now I'm the founder of a community, HYPCCCYCL, that half of our industry can't pronounce. triple C's, kind of thing. And we're also about to release, as of now, a platform called Hard Skill Exchange. So it's a product that was a pretty much logical continuation of that project. And I also run a go to market mag and yeah.
[00:02:06] Leanne: I mean, you're, you're a very busy lady and I'm so thankful that you carved out time and from my sneak peek at the Hard Skill Exchange, I'm really excited about seeing that come like out and be released. I think it's going to be. Pretty amazing. When you were kind of thinking of putting these things together, what was your kind of big motivator or thought or insight that made you really leap forward in action?
Like what was kind of the precipice or catalyst?
[00:02:37] Julia: Yeah, the catalyst was a company pain and the pain was really obvious. They couldn't sell the product. So the product was way ahead of the market readiness and like five years ago, people started to buy, like actually spending money on sales engagement. It sounds crazy now, but back at the time, sales for a sales loft and outreach were leading the trend.
And like it was, you know, huge branding work, different content work and yeah, influencers. But essentially, if you would talk to different analysts, you'll see that the CROs, the CMOs, the CEOs are not spending money on it. So that was quite, you know, tricky out in market positions, um, market readiness and what market readiness actually is.
Yeah,
[00:03:29] Leanne: and that makes a really big deal about whether or not you get your, your deals to go through or even get past that, that barrier call. So I, I definitely see the value in needing to get that type of positioning and push really. What was, so kind of talk me through how you did it, like what, what happened next?
[00:03:55] Julia: Yeah. And basically I had this crazy KPI as a marketer to drive crazy amount of leads and very fast, impossible is nothing. And Obviously it's not a crazy, rich budget to do so. And, uh, it was a fun time because also like live events started to sort of dry out because of the COVID situation and stuff. And I decided to launch a community, a community.
Back then, like, man, you know, like something crazy because there were only 2, 3 communities in B2B, and I'm talking about legitimate communities, not just like email list. So, obviously, revenue collective. And, you know, it seems quite, it seemed quite impossible to, Oh my God, I'm going to launch this like little thing, like, and people have revenue collective and sales hacker kind of the pressure was on, but I did it and, uh, I had an amazing team.
I hired. The best sales leader to my knowledge in call calling Justin Michael to represent it, to be the face of it. And it all came from this research when I actually took the time as a marketer and went to my customer success team, to my sales team, my CEO. You know, try to get some happy accounts, uh, unsatisfied accounts, uh, potential targets and like our marketing kind of a pipeline just to understand and actually talk to these people, build a relationship with them.
It's not like one time talk. I had no clue how to do market research or like meeting like a customer kind of research. And like, I didn't follow any framework. But what I tried to do is just to not sound creepy and like not to turn it into, you know, kind of a interrogation. And so we just casually connected like arts, like, like our conversation a couple of days ago, Hey, where'd you work him on that.
And I saw a trend that people were really interested in cold calling, but at the same time, the industry presented it as like, you know, it was kind of a bingo yesterday. And no one was talking about it. There were no cold calling competitions, events, nothing. And so. I just picked up this trend. I hired Justin and I'm a huge believer in participatory marketer marketing when you have basically when you take your customers and make them the center of the event versus, you know, your leaders and board and and CVCs and all this stuff.
So. I took this customers, so, and some influencers, methodology, authors, CEOs, and make them compete in a cold calling competition live with a dialer. And yeah, I just like, we had Aaron Ross competing with Gong SVRs. It was super crazy and it was super viral too. We did cameos when no one was doing it. And so, yeah, I just started a trend.
I'll stop here tonight.
[00:07:10] Leanne: Yeah, I mean, it's so much fun and I think that, you know, there's a couple of things that I want to highlight about what you just said is 1. you just talk to people in a non creepy interrogation manner. Right? Like, that's. We spend so much time over complicating things, but when you approach people as a person, like that's how you build relationships.
You take away that like facade of like job titles of, you know, company representatives and all of these things. And you just have a conversation. And I love science. I love market research. I love so many things. But at the end of the day, If you wait until you have, like, a sterile, like, list and a survey and these things is that you aren't, you're getting insights, but they're not as rich and deep as if you, you lose all the nuance and.
You talked to, you mentioned it in one of our conversations, something like, like a large volume of people and, and that's so powerful. And that's, to me, that's why you're able to pick up this trend is because when you start talking to that volume of people as human, like you, it becomes really obvious what's going on.
And another thing I want to highlight is I remember when I was in a position and I had to be the one doing cold calls. And there just wasn't that much information about it. And this was, you know, maybe 10 years ago. So it's definitely changed. But the only advice I got was, oh, well, you're a woman. So people think you're less threatening.
So they're less likely to hang up on you. And then, because I was calling within a region that had a regional accent of which my accent did not match, I was told to try to copy that accent and mirror them because they. Did not like Californian accents. And so it was, that was all the guidance I got. And I remember being a young professional, just trying to do my best and, and definitely not like being hung up on or the occasional angry, you know, in person that was like, I don't know how you got my number.
Well, sir, you gave it to us. But those, those type of interactions that give cold calling that intimidating factor.
[00:09:34] Julia: I love what you're saying, Leanne, what actually what you brought up with a, you know, zero information kind of saying, and the task that you have to accomplish, or like a goal that you have to achieve now and the pressure and, you know, which is the only piece of advice within the company, like, you know, imitate the accent.
I mean, well, thank you, but it's not going to help. And so that would actually drove the inspiration to create hype cycle and to create hard skill exchange. I'm really passionate about the letter and the vision of it. Because like the way we are, like what we are studying, I don't know about yourself, but I learned just marketing by doing it.
I don't like in all of my friends that have the professional degrees and no, I'm a professional interpreter. So I speak 5 languages. I'm Never talking about it almost and I'm never like actually using it. I probably actively study for a year and then I just like submitted tasks and just my master's work so that I don't see like the necessity to devote legitimately five years.
To going to college daily and just, you know, I like for what, like, how much do you have to listen from people who are just reading the same lecture and they're not interpreters themselves. So, with hard skill exchange, the idea is to really bring. Executives to bring top practitioners from the industry, the ones who are not, you know, hyped up on LinkedIn, but who are like four acts, you know, president's club, the people, and to enable an environment where you could drill a skill that you choose to drill, that you could drill cold calling and, you know, just SMM and just like freaking going to market.
And like the whole vision is to. Break the silos and to break the borders and this like stupid kind of classification that, you know, if I'm an executive, I only need to focus on strategy. And if I'm like, I hate it in our industry, because as an executive, you have to know how to freaking the social media marketing.
I'm sorry, but that's a reality and it's really sad to see that a majority of the most talented and genius people that I know in the industry, like, they're not followed on LinkedIn and they get 3 likes. And, you know, like people who have no content, they have thousands of like, so it's, I mean, you can hate social media and just, you know, be angry and refuse like opening your mind to it.
But well, it's not a low level skill or whatever you define
[00:12:32] Leanne: it. I agree. I think that there's. I understand both sides of it, right? So starting earlier with 1 of your points about like, higher education is that I think that there are schools and there are times and places where higher education can benefit you.
But but whether or not it's a gatekeeper is a different story. So so we agree there for sure. 1 of. The biggest things that helped me when I, when I was doing my formal education was changing the way I interpreted the world. And that was on me to do. Right? They can't teach that they can't make you do it.
And I think that that's 1 of the biggest benefits that you can get. If you are intentional about what you're there to do. And for my masters, I wasn't, I was. In my late 20s, so, you know, we, we like to pretend that most of my brain was kind of developed by that, but, you know, and I was able to, to do that with coming from a science background, which teaches you nothing about business.
No clue. To learning about all aspects of it, and I think that once I started to understand the machinations and inner workings of it and finance and things like that was that I really needed to know those things in order to be successful at any trade or any industry or any vertical that I was going to be in.
And I still think that marketers need to know more about finance, but that's a, that's a different soapbox and that you don't need. A college degree to do, you just need to set aside time to intentionally study it. But the other part about it was that LinkedIn and social media is definitely no longer a low level skill.
It is a higher stakes game and, you know, it's wrapped up. It can do so much good for business, but it can also we've seen it. It can tank your business immediately if you do it wrong. And so I see a lot of CEOs that when I was ghostwriting for like about a year ago, a lot for LinkedIn is I saw them not know what to say, not know how to say it, and not have time to dedicate to doing it on a recurring basis.
And from there, they were, my advice was always like, look, even if you don't want to post, you need to participate. And they didn't know how to comment. They didn't know, like, what to say on someone's thing or how to add value. And they were just so unfamiliar with how social media works and and all these things.
And, you know, I, I definitely see that as 1 of the. Things that shifted just like marketers need to know finance is that leadership needs to understand or have someone that can explain to them quickly and concisely how these different channels and tactics. Impact everything
[00:15:30] Julia: 100%. I love your point about marketers.
We need to know how finance work, but, you know, I want to take it even further because. Marketers need to know how everything works and everything is like, knowing it's not enough and knowing is like worth nothing if you're not practicing it. So marketers need to decide that they need finance. If they don't make this decision and it's this decision is made for them by someone above them, it will never work.
And that's the flaw of B2B because I have experience of marketing B2C products, They're like, the difference is tremendous and B2B marketing. It's all ghostwriting and events. Like, really, I mean, running ads, okay, we call it account base, whatever, but it's still it's the creativity is just, it's not happening now.
It's a little bit better than it used to be, but it's still not, it can't even touch me to see on. So. With I mean, 2 years ago, we launched this project hype cycle and whole vision is to bring this T shaped marketing approach where, you know, the premise. So you need to know, like, we have the letter T and we need to know, like, and ads or, like, you choose whatever marketing elements you are going in.
And then everything else is sort of complimentary. But we took it to go to market, so you need to know products and you need to know CS and finance and design because again, like, I can't over emphasize it, but your design is why I noticed the podcast. Like it's basic aesthetics that lacks in B2B and it killed me because you look at the websites and they're ridiculous.
Like, come on, you have millions. Why can't you invest? Or like, why don't you have the taste to do so? It just make the product visually appealing to make it like, I don't know, usable. Yeah,
[00:17:40] Leanne: I mean, I, it's the difference between a product that I'm excited to use and that I'm like, yes, like, oh, you know, this little bit of like, oh, this is pretty, but like, not, it's just at some point, ugly aesthetics are offensive and like.
It just irritates you to use it. And I mean, I'm not going to like throw any certain old school types of spreadsheets under the bus, but I think we can all imagine a certain platform that we're all probably very familiar with and it's rectangle hard corners on everything. And it's old school, you know, and it's evolved, but there's ways to just.
Make it like, delightful to use and then you'll get more stickiness and then you'll get more revenue and then you'll get, you know, all these business objectives that you're after. And, you know, I think that it's from fear, you know, corporate speak is corporate because everyone's afraid to use. Actual words that have emotional things and it turns into almost like corporate passive aggressiveness.
And now we have corporate passive aggressive marketing. Like, no, just just be cool. Be fun. Like, it won't hurt you. I promise. Like, and, you know, I think that. It comes back to really knowing your audience and market research and having conversations with actual humans. You know, if if you're marketing to everyone, you're going to be a lot more afraid to have a certain style of humor or a certain, you know, style of aesthetic.
You're like, oh, but I don't know if this is going to appeal to this group. Well, test it, or maybe say. The people that fit our product and fit our company and our ethos and our mission and our brand and all of this are people that would enjoy this and just take a
[00:19:28] Julia: stand on something represent. I think that, you know, to be really has to read about and at least to read about it, not to mention practicing it and reading being is that I feel that we live in some kind of a fantasy world.
Where you go to, so say with go to market, simple example, like two years ago, the only person was talking about go to market in our industry was Mark Roberge. No one else. Stage to capital, go to market and free blog posts to my knowledge. That's all. And so like, there's this book, can you chill on the customer's company competitors?
That's the like founding blocks of go to market. That's why we have triple season, the name of our project. Basically invented it and laid the foundation to Japanese author. It's a framework and teaches you to think about, you know, your product through three lenses and I'm going with this is. What's happening now in the industry, they say, okay, like there is go to market games, there's like everyone gradually started to use, go to market, go to market.
And now you're going to every other LinkedIn profile and everyone is a go to market leader. But in reality, there is the arts. Like, wow, that's quite a stretch. So I have messages from different, you know, sales leaders asking, wow, like I was practicing go to market for 20 years, but like, I need a book, a framework so that I can market it.
And well, you aren't practicing go to market, you're practicing sales. And sales did not go to market. It's a piece of it. So that's the kind of approach that I'm talking about. When you see a reality of this, and you're not imagining it or over marketing it. It was learning by doing kind of thing is the same premise because.
We tend to, you know, to put all the badges, like, again, I'm like, I have nothing against SBRs. It's just like the persona that I'm most familiar with lately because I was doing a ton of market research. Like, specifically devoted to that, but they are all like, they all have this CRO school certificate. And I'm like, what are you going to do with it?
Like, why do you even invest the time being an SDR to like, so a CRO problem? Like it's not what you do. Like maybe you should figure out how to get meetings in a recession. And how to drive conversations that actually convert into deals. So, there is a huge gap between like, that courses, the knowledge that.
People throw at us, and I'm not even mentioning the, you know, as a generic content that we read online. And that's a real need that you need to solve today. I don't want to even touch the customer success kind of element because every time when I'm hearing about, like, being customer centric, Leanne, I just get, like, down chills is you start to listen about it.
People talk about it for hours, how important it is, customer obsessions, customer centricity, all sorts of imaginary frameworks. But there is no, like, practical way of, like, okay, what do I do to actually, like, be customer centric? Like, what's the... You know, what's the
[00:22:58] Leanne: methodology? Yeah. Like, what what's the conversation?
What's the next steps? What are the what are the tasks associated with the strategy? And I think that connection between the on the ground on foot. Type of day to day activities with that, like, 3000 foot view, 30, 000, however far up in the sky we're going today, but matching the strategy to actionable items and saying, this is what the day to day life in your job looks like.
This is when you make a call. You say X, Y, and Z, you listen, you do X, Y, and Z, you, you know, and that, that handholding, if you will, but not, it's not a handholding, it's guidance, it's training, it's actionable things that make customer centric a real life. Like reality, it's not just a buzzword that we're putting in our marketing anymore.
When, you know, during the call you act a certain way that actually is open to supporting the customer's goals, needs, wants, desires, personalities, you know, just that white glove treatment. Because that's what it should be. Right. If you go into Ritz Carlton or, you know, another one of those like higher level hotels, they are customer centric because what do they do?
They know your name when you check in, or if you stay with them repeatedly, they, you know, mention it or, you know, there's different actions that they do or things that they include in their room. And yeah, it's for more luxurious price point, but there are. Differences in the tactics in the tasks in the how that make it so that they have the proof behind what they're doing.
And that's what B2B means, like, like, you know, is maybe, you know, just slapping on customer concierge instead of customer success. Like, that's not really what we're doing. Like, is that real life? Like, what is the difference? And, you know, terminology matters, but so does what happens when that phone gets picked up.
[00:25:07] Julia: Couldn't agree more. And yeah, I just, I feel like all of the. Problems in generally B2B, B2C, whatever the motion is, are caused by founders and they start with founders and excuse me, it's not the VCs. It's your choice to take money early on, or just, you know, to do your homework and to actually AB test business model, the need and, you know, the relevance for the market condition now, and the problem starts when founders create solution for themselves.
No, in PowerPoint, and then they hire a ton of people because they raise money fast to sell that fantasy, you know, to the world. And they hire people, fire people every year or two. So with customer centricity, like, you know, Apple is an example, I'm reading the biography of Steve Jobs. And what fascinates me is that people tend to saying that.
Like Steve was the person who, you know, brought the iPhone because he had, like, he was the visionary and he told the market that, Hey, you'll, you need it. Unfortunately it wasn't done that way. And like, luckily Apple exists without Steve Jobs, especially with the latest release of the AR glasses. I mean, the innovation is there just takes more time and customer centricity, like Apple is the most customer centric company in the world.
And I know people that work there and they're crazy about doing market research. They are crazy about AB tests and everything else. You just don't notice it. You just don't know that the person who is talking to you represent a company. You just don't know that you are part of an A B test. So the goal of the company is to create a seamless experience for the end user.
Like really like native, not creepy to continue what we began with, or you just feel natural to share the problems that you face in the market. And the company is supposed to solve and speak to those problems with their products and services.
[00:27:21] Leanne: Yeah. And I mean, I think that that's a pretty big hallmark of customer centricity is that the customer, the end user doesn't know.
That that's part of what's happening. It's natural. It's organic. It's maybe manufactured organic, but it's still protected from being that sterile. Did you click on a button? Did you over scientification? It's just even a word. We're just making up words. But, you know, that, that overdone part of it, and, you know, I'm excited to see the future of marketing and sales be one where people really follow through on being customer centric and they really are doing the research and they really are picking up the phone and getting those interactions and, you know, having the confidence to maybe go off script in a framework that's still on script, if that makes sense.
So we know that those things create long term value, right? Because otherwise Apple just wouldn't exist or otherwise, you know, all these things wouldn't happen. We know that delighted customers bring referrals and that they don't quit your company. Like they, they don't say like, Oh, this is not for me anymore.
But what are some other things about when doing like. If I was going to talk about like the strategies that we've pulled out, we've, we've pulled out being truly customer centric. We've pulled out what GTM really means and the difference between sales and GTM. You know, we've pulled out a couple of things here, but when do you think, let's say there's a founder and their early stage, when do you think it's too soon for them to put into action some of the things that you talked about
[00:29:06] Julia: or too late?
Well, I think that it's just, I'm trying to put it in a very light way, but I don't think that everyone should become a founder. And I definitely don't think that you should become a founder just for the sake of being a founder. So before becoming a founder, you just have to actually think like 10 times because People tend to think that it's fun and you get, you know, like the, I don't know, all of the financial benefits and the creativity and the freedom and, you know, all the things in the world, but this concept is awkwardly romanticized and again, just market it people like marketing is a very dangerous kind of thing.
Now it's it. We have marketing wars. The situation that is happening with Russia and Ukraine and all this madness. It's a marketing war. We have oceans and, you know, like, full of trash and, like, all the disasters. It's also because of freaking shitty marketing and bad founders that invent stuff that people don't use and need.
But the market as well. So being a marketer, you have to saying like, what's your market? And I mean, it's quite this token to like, you know, it's this problem will never be sold. So it's just by designing possible because there are people like Star Wars kind of saying, right?
[00:30:27] Leanne: Yeah. I think that you have some really great advice about really that introspection before you become a founder, you know, does the world need this or do I need this?
There's, there's a meme that I saw. And I hate to say that I lurk on Reddit sometimes, but there's a meme that says, should you be a founder or should you just go to therapy? And it's brutal. It's harsh. It's rude. But at the same time, I have assisted founders that weren't ready to be founders. They were overwhelmed.
They were stressed out. They were working more than they humanly should. They weren't able to see their families. And, you know, the fairy tale is, is that you do that for five years and then you get some, like, millions of dollars payout. But that's a fairy tale. That doesn't always happen. And the other thing that happens that is actually quite frequent is that people blow through their savings.
They blow through their retirement. They mortgage their house, like second mortgage, or they go into debt and then they. Don't have a way to earn back the things because they jumped into it too quickly. And I think that that's when you start to see the multiple time founders and that they. Approach things differently than a first time founder.
And, you know, I love this concept that I call the learning velocity. And basically it's that, you know, you start in the bottom and then you slowly learn stuff. But if you're a multiple time founder, you're not starting in that, that bottom zero, zero, you're starting higher up because you've already learned the lessons.
And, you know, to, to connect that with hype cycle and GTM games and HSE is that when you're mentored or you have these practice rounds, or you have these experiences where you're guided by someone else, you aren't starting at 0, 0, you aren't staying, you know, growing, you know, a little bit by a little bit by a little bit.
You are, but you're also going to get. Exponential growth more intentionally in the direction you're trying to go to when you take, you know, different approach than the one you took last time, instead of just repeating the same mistakes.
[00:32:44] Julia: Yeah, I'm back here. So, yeah, like, before launching hype cycle, actually wasn't supposed to launch it with Justin.
I had a friend of mine and I, like, as a scientist. You understand that there is really philosophy and mathematics in this world and everything else is just about Kim in this intersection of different disciplines and that the way the other subject matters. Hasn't been created. So same, like I was really inspired by this idea and like, as an example of sales and marketing, I really felt this thing and I wanted them to like walk a mile in each other's shoes just to like, Hey, like, it's crazy that we marketers don't talk to customers.
It's crazy. The Q sellers don't even know how, you know, data science work. Like we just, well, like we need to. Create this intersection. It was so obvious to me like two years ago, but the only person who understood me was Mary Shea and analysts from Forrester. Yeah, I just. And the industry wasn't ready.
They were like, why, you know, I just, I, I don't get it. And there was one more person that I don't mind. She was really inspired. She's like, yeah, let's do it. Like let's roll. And so we were working full time jobs and I was a founder inside of another company, entrepreneur, you call it. And so I was ready to leave that to the company and to start this new thing on my own.
And we got our first sponsorship deal, like the branding and everything. And I remember it was the time to actually execute, like, two days before, like, we were supposed to show up and present the results. And she messaged me and she's like, Julia, I hate to do that, but can't be always on my cue. I feel that, you know, it's unfair that you devote, like, all of your time to this, and I devote only 10%.
I can't work my job, and I can't, like, do this, you know, after hours. And, at the time, I hated it. We, like, it was really hard for me because I was on the spot, and I had to basically perform for two people. At the last minute, but then I was grateful that it happened timely because that led me to think like, who's the person that is even crazier than me?
Like, who can
[00:35:16] Leanne: pull it off? Right? Like, like, who and that's so hard to do that difficult conversation where she was real and she's like, look, like, this is this. But at the end of the day, I respect people that have that those difficult moments so much more than the ones that try to fake it. Right. So I emphasize what a hard position and hard few days, but look where it's led you.
So yeah, you, you found someone that matched your energy and that matched your drive and your ambition and your insights. What happened
[00:35:46] Julia: next? It's just crazy because Justin represents sales. And first he rejected me. He was like, Hey, like, no, no, let's do cold calling. Like I, I don't really get it. So it was marketing frustrating.
What? But then I showed him the design. And, like, I'm a design freak, so I work with different designers, and I, like, you know, we have, like, hundreds of iterations, and then it's finally nailed, and I'm showing him, like, the product, and he's like, yeah, like, I'm in, so yeah. To the point of aesthetics in the beginning, like you have to, as a marketer, I think that the biggest law that is happening in SAS and B2B especially is that we don't have any control over the product, even if there is like product marketing and it would be really logical to have some kind of control.
But your role is to communicate the product, not to actually, you know, bring insight and market research to it.
[00:36:45] Leanne: I mean, in marketing products, marketing, you're supposed to be able to, but it does, you know, that it's a fairy tale. It's a fairy tale. And that's one of the hardest things about, you know, becoming, leaving that, that warm, fuzzy land of education into the reality of your day to day jobs.
Is that there's a lot of fairy tales. We were told there's a lot of, a lot of them, but once you start to pull back the covers, you, you get a better view and it's the people that, that still care, that still want to see it done the right way. That's still, you know, have that, that push to, I know that this will make us more money.
We need to do it. Those are the ones that end up as Apple. Those are the ones that end up as Salesforce. You know, it just, it's when you let no become no and you let bad practice infiltrate and remain. That's where you start to turn the culture away from, you know, what your North star is said to be and into just a direction.
So as far as the future of marketing, what do you think you want to see? Like, where do you think it should go? And where do you think it is
[00:37:59] Julia: going? Apple AR goggles. Yeah, I'll be really brief. I'm really excited about this one. You know, it's just we are all quiet about Zuckerberg and him like burning billions and like he wasn't able to deliver it.
He had all the money and that's again another myth that, you know, if you have the money, you have the product. Nope. And you have the best people and nope. But Apple did it and yeah, really super excited for this one. The real next step for marketing of interactivity that we all seek and really wants marketing became too much static.
Like, it just really feels like, you know, when those 98 to me. Kind of saying like ads and everything. We're not evolving. There is nothing new and the reason why it's happening because there wasn't a new media to do so, excuse me, but B2B and tech talk and, you know, like Instagram, it's fine, but it's not like revolutionary.
It's just like, everyone was telling me like, yeah, you should do a tech talk and you will get deals and like this and that really, I mean. It's a nice thing to try to A, B test, whatever, but I'm sorry, it won't close like, you know, a fortune 500 deal out of TikTok. Like that's the reality.
[00:39:23] Leanne: I mean, it's going to where your people are in context of what they're there to do.
If I am scrolling through TikTok and I see some cool thing on how to use Excel better, I'm going to bookmark it. And scroll past and how many times am I actually coming back to the things I've never. I'm not never. I'm not. I wish I want to be that person. I aspire to be that person. That's bookmarks moved on.
It's just. How it goes, you know, and, and I love Tik TOK and I, I definitely get a lot of entertainment from, you know, businesses on Tik TOK and even some B2C ones that are very funny and, and, you know, am I, am I using Duolingo because I think the Duolingo owl like has like fire comments. No, I'm still not.
I love it. I'm entertained by it, but I'm still not adopting their product. Now, do I think that I would want to work as that marketer and have, like, their witty comebacks? Absolutely. Please, like, I have an Instagram account just so I can make the stupid puns that I want to say that I can't say for a corporation.
Like, it's, it's why it exists. But I agree that there's a lot of static and there's a lot of noise, and I'm really excited to see where the AR lenses go, because another thing that we've seen is, you know, we saw smartwatches try to be live. We saw like an attempt and then they quickly died. And, you know, we even saw this with hybrid cars, we saw like hybrid, like, like electric cars be like a thing.
And then, and then they just didn't get adopted enough. And then there was a retry. And it's always these retries that, you know, a different company does. And actually, this will probably be the 2nd time it's Apple because Apple was like, hey, look, it's an Apple watch. You actually want this now. And so hopefully the AR lenses are going to be the, you actually want this now, you know, I, I'm excited to see what happens there.
And then, you know, we're, we're getting towards the end of our, our time together, so I've got to ask you the question that is probably the hardest to answer is when people come to you and they're asking you questions, what is the question they should ask you, but they don't. So they might ask you, like, everything around it.
And you're like, no, this is what you really need to be asking me. What kind of things might that include?
[00:41:49] Julia: Hard one. Um, I think that, like, the question, what do you do should be complimented? What do you do to become better? Because we're focused on reading. We're focused on consumption, but we're not focused on the output and the best thing that, like, you can ask not only me, but anyone really.
What do you do to become better?
[00:42:13] Leanne: And I love it. And, you know, if you're a person that's continually trying to be better and you meet someone that just doesn't care, I hope you know, right, they'll be like, I'm relaxed on the weekends. Actually that is helping you become better. So that's a good thing to
[00:42:29] Julia: know.
That's how, you know, the series of books, like don't give an F or how to not give an F like that's cause I saw like 10 books like that in a bookstore. So that's how they are born. Yeah,
[00:42:43] Leanne: I mean, it's, it's an interesting, interesting way of looking at it. I love that question. I'm going to steal that. I'm, I'm adding it to my list of questions to see, um, that's really what this podcast turns into like a gathering, a hoarding of good questions, but I appreciate you so much.
And the time that you spent with me, if someone wants to reach out to you or they have questions or they want to like, become a part of what you're doing, how would they do that? The best
[00:43:09] Julia: way to do it is to just go to Hard Skill.Exchange and to become better today by practicing your skills with the best people in this industry.
People that you probably never heard of, maybe some of them, but they're actually crushing it. And, you know, the best companies in this world from F. 500 to like all the faster growing startups like Gong and Hotspot, and it's really exciting. So if you want to practice this skill and stop talking about it, go ahead.
[00:43:45] Leanne: Awesome. Love it. All right. Well, thank you again. And if anyone wants to leave a review, maybe like, or subscribe, I would always appreciate that. And if you have questions, you can find me on LinkedIn. Or you can email info at Markigy, M A R K I G Y dot com. Thanks.
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